DRUGS KEPT ME ALIVE

JAN FABRE (BE)

For the first time in Ticino, Jan Fabre, choreographer, director, writer, visual artist. For over twenty years one of the most important personalities of the contemporary scene. An all-round artist, surrealist, scandalous, mocking, obscene. Able to shake a global audience with his innovative shows, in Drugs kept me alive, (world debut May 2012, Maribor), he presents a solo with Antony Rizzi, dancer for years of William Forsythe and his Ballet Frankfurt. A monologue of a survivor – a man who has centered his life between “ecstasy” and abyss. He lives in a paradoxical world of addiction to ecstasy, ketamine, poppers. A hero who needs drugs to treat his disease. He travels in a giant airship above the clouds. He creates morgan fairies that seem loving and inspire him with intense happiness. Yet it is this ethereal intensity that fuels his obsessive desire. An intensity that is filled with a certain purity: it is pure ecstasy. He lives in a bubble that is like his second nature, a capsule where silence is deafening and death cannot touch him. In Drugs kept me alive Jan Fabre describes a mortal, a life poised on the edge of death. The closer he gets to death, the more pills and drinks are needed to “prop up” this life. This is the condition of the protagonist in this monologue: he has looked death in the face and decided to play a poker game with the disease in his body: Drugs kept me alive.

DRUGS KEPT ME ALIVE
text, direction, set design Jan Fabre
performer Antony Rizzi
dramaturgy Miet Martens

WED 24.10.2012 | 20.45
TEATRO FOCE – LUGANO

interview Antony Rizzi, choreographer and dancer performer of Drugs Kept Me Alive